Bob Cringeley makes a bold statement in a blog post responding to Apple's iCloud announcement: "Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows." He says, "The incumbent platform today is Windows because it is in Windows machines that nearly all of our data and our ability to use that data have been trapped. But the Apple announcement changes all that. Suddenly the competition isn't about platforms at all, but about data, with that data being crunched on a variety of platforms through the use of cheap downloaded apps."

IIRC you can program stuff in X-Code and copy it to your iDevice, but that's much more hassle than on a retro computer. Coding in BASIC is also a lot easier.

Apple calls it "instant on", but really it's just waking up from standby. When an iDevice sleeps it uses very little power. It still receives notifications and mail, but wastes very little power. So I never turn my iPad off and when I grab it it still has about the same amount of juice when I put it down.

iOS on my iPhone 3G booted very slow. On my iPad 1 and iPhone 4 it's pretty quick, but I almost never turn them
off.

IIRC you can program stuff in X-Code and copy it to your iDevice, but that's much more hassle than on a retro computer. Coding in BASIC is also a lot easier.

Of course, but that's developing on OSX, even if for iOS... See where I'm going ?

AFAIK, iOS is the first general-purpose consumer-level OS that explicitly locks down its internals away from consumers, which can only access them through security breaches or with the help of another OS. I don't think it's a healthy precedent. But well... Maybe I start to become the old guy who preferred the way it was done before without noticing, even though I'm a bit young for that.

You can still make your own software to run on it, you just can distribute is. Probably because Apple doesn't one someone to spread software that causes problem. They don't want to link their products to the word "problem". Back in the old days Steve/Apple didn't want customers to open up their Macs and try to repair stuff either.

OS X you can boot and start coding away in Perl and Python for example or install a number of programming languages.

If Steve envisions people dropping their desktop PCs in favor of pads then the users turn in to pure consuming customers. Which is good for most users and companies I guess, but not so good for people who look to examine, tinker, experiment and try to do stuff with their device not deemed possible.

I like my iPad and iPhone to "just work" without any problems. But I also, when I feel like it, do strange stuff and I need either my iMac, Linux PC or any old retro machine for that.

My Psion 3a even came with a programming language (OPL). Back then it was almost mandatory you could also program your computer yourself. It was one of the reasons you bought a computer.

But in those days people who bought computers were people who were interested in computers. These days they want to browse, watch movies, listen to moves. Software problems are solved by googling for "<something> freeware" instead of writing some code yourself. I do it too, why spend hours, days, weeks instead of downloading something for free. The downside is we know less and less about coding. 99% of the users don't I guess. In the 80's 99% could at least make a small BASIC program.

It's ironic Apple is in the front of making locked down consumer friendly products while their roots are in the computer clubs.